This is Off the Beaten Track, in fact it may be where No Man Went Before. If you can find another recording of this I would be very intrigued.

Avo Raud courted my mother in her late teens. She was a reasonably accomplished amateur pianist, and on her 20th birthday she received the gift of his manuscript of three Miniatures. I remember seeing it when I was young. Mum didn't say much about it and I never heard her play it, and at that time I was neither interested in her pre-marital affairs nor in questionable handwritten music, and soon forgot about it. She died 15 years ago and the manuscript was buried in piles of paper, only to surface recently.

Google has not much to say about Raud. It seems he was somewhat known for his piano playing and among the elite of Swedish chess players, and practised medicine in Stockholm. He must have been born around 1925 and died not 60 years old.

Of the three miniatures the first, "danse monotone", is aptly named, and the third, "danse d'espagne", has thick chords very hard to read. Here I present the second and most fun piece, "danse estonienne".

Whoa, you certainly can't get further off the beaten track than this Judging by the name, I'd guess the composer was Estonian himself. Is that the case ? The idiom reminds me of that of Tubin, a composer I respect but fail to warm to. Like this piece, his music seems a bit grim and in-your-face, without much in the way of melodic charm. I'm not sure whether I like this piece or not. The outer sections sound arid and dour to me but the middle section is effective and exciting. Very convincingly played despite some minor signs of strain - it sounds hard on the fingers.

What an engaging interpretation. The piece seems a bit like Bartok. You play it with anice crispness with lots of expression and wonderful variations in timing and tapering of phrases.While the piece is built on repetitions, you make all of them interesting.

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